The Pickwick Papers
whose vices, want of faith and attachment to his companion could at all
events find no place. He was still ragged and squalid, but his face was
not quite so hollow as on his first meeting with Mr. Pickwick, a few
days before. As he took off his hat to our benevolent old friend, he
murmured some broken expressions of gratitude, and muttered something
about having been saved from starving.
‘Well, well,’ said Mr. Pickwick, impatiently interrupting him, ‘you can
follow with Sam. I want to speak to you, Mr. Jingle. Can you walk
without his arm?’
‘Certainly, sir--all ready--not too fast--legs shaky--head queer--round
and round--earthquaky sort of feeling--very.’
‘Here, give me your arm,’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘No, no,’ replied Jingle; ‘won’t indeed--rather not.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Mr. Pickwick; ‘lean upon me, I desire, Sir.’
Seeing that he was confused and agitated, and uncertain what to do, Mr.
Pickwick cut the matter short by drawing the invalided stroller’s arm
through his, and leading him away, without saying another word about it.
During the whole of this time the countenance of Mr. Samuel Weller had
exhibited an expression of the most overwhelming and absorbing
astonishment that the imagination can portray. After looking from Job to
Jingle, and from Jingle to Job in profound silence, he softly ejaculated
the words, ‘Well, I _am_ damn’d!’ which he repeated at least a score of
times; after which exertion, he appeared wholly bereft of speech, and
again cast his eyes, first upon the one and then upon the other, in mute
perplexity and bewilderment.
‘Now, Sam!’ said Mr. Pickwick, looking back.
‘I’m a-comin’, sir,’ replied Mr. Weller, mechanically following his
master; and still he lifted not his eyes from Mr. Job Trotter, who
walked at his side in silence.
Job kept his eyes fixed on the ground for some time. Sam, with his glued
to Job’s countenance, ran up against the people who were walking about,
and fell over little children, and stumbled against steps and railings,
without appearing at all sensible of it, until Job, looking stealthily
up, said--
‘How do you do, Mr. Weller?’
‘It _is_ him!’ exclaimed Sam; and having established Job’s identity
beyond all doubt, he smote his leg, and vented his feelings in a long,
shrill whistle.
‘Things has altered with me, sir,’ said Job.
‘I should think they had,’ exclaimed Mr. Weller, surveying his
companion’s rags with undisguised wonder. ‘This is rayther a change for
the worse, Mr. Trotter, as the gen’l’m’n said, wen he got two doubtful
shillin’s and sixpenn’orth o’ pocket-pieces for a good half-crown.’
‘It is indeed,’ replied Job, shaking his head. ‘There is no deception
now, Mr. Weller. Tears,’ said Job, with a look of momentary slyness--
‘tears are not the only proofs of distress, nor the best ones.’
‘No, they ain’t,’ replied Sam expressively.
‘They may be put on, Mr. Weller,’ said Job.
‘I know they may,’ said Sam; ‘some people, indeed, has ‘em always ready
laid on, and can pull out the plug wenever they likes.’
‘Yes,’ replied Job; ‘but these sort of things are not so easily
counterfeited, Mr. Weller, and it is a more painful process to get them
up.’ As he spoke, he pointed to his sallow, sunken cheeks, and, drawing
up his coat sleeve, disclosed an arm which looked as if the bone could
be broken at a touch, so sharp and brittle did it appear, beneath its
thin covering of flesh.
‘Wot have you been a-doin’ to yourself?’ said Sam, recoiling.
‘Nothing,’ replied Job.
‘Nothin’!’ echoed Sam.
‘I have been doin’ nothing for many weeks past,’ said Job; and eating
and drinking almost as little.’
Sam took one comprehensive glance at Mr. Trotter’s thin face and
wretched apparel; and then, seizing him by the arm, commenced dragging
him away with great violence.
‘Where are you going, Mr. Weller?’ said Job, vainly struggling in the
powerful grasp of his old enemy.
‘Come on,’ said Sam; ‘come on!’ He deigned no further explanation till
they reached the tap, and then called for a pot of porter, which was
speedily produced.
‘Now,’ said Sam, ‘drink that up, ev’ry drop on it, and then turn the pot
upside down, to let me see as you’ve took the medicine.’
‘But, my dear Mr. Weller,’ remonstrated Job.
‘Down vith it!’ said Sam peremptorily.
Thus admonished, Mr. Trotter raised the pot to his lips, and, by gentle
and almost imperceptible degrees, tilted it into the air. He paused
once, and only once, to draw a long breath, but without raising his face
from the vessel, which, in a few moments thereafter, he held out at
arm’s length, bottom upward. Nothing fell upon the ground but a few
particles of froth, which slowly detached themselves from the rim, and
trickled lazily down.
‘Well done!’ said Sam. ‘How do you find yourself arter it?’
‘Better, Sir. I think I am better,’ responded Job.
‘O’ course you air,’ said Sam argumentatively. ‘It’s like puttin’ gas in
a balloon. I can see with the naked eye that you gets stouter under the
operation. Wot do you say to another o’ the same dimensions?’
‘I would rather not, I am much obliged to you, Sir,’ replied Job--‘much
rather not.’
‘Vell, then, wot do you say to some wittles?’ inquired Sam.
‘Thanks to your worthy governor, Sir,’ said Mr. Trotter, ‘we have half a
leg of mutton, baked, at a quarter before three, with the potatoes under
it to save boiling.’
‘Wot! Has _he_ been a-purwidin’ for you?’ asked Sam emphatically.
‘He has, Sir,’ replied Job. ‘More than that, Mr. Weller; my master being
very ill, he got us a room--we were in a kennel before--and paid for it,
Sir; and come to look at us, at night, when nobody should know. Mr.
Weller,’ said Job, with real tears in his eyes, for once, ‘I could serve
that gentleman till I fell down dead at his feet.’
‘I say!’ said Sam, ‘I’ll trouble you, my friend! None o’ that!’
Job Trotter looked amazed.
‘None o’ that, I say, young feller,’ repeated Sam firmly. ‘No man serves
him but me. And now we’re upon it, I’ll let you into another secret
besides that,’ said Sam, as he paid for the beer. ‘I never heerd, mind
you, or read of in story-books, nor see in picters, any angel in tights
and gaiters--not even in spectacles, as I remember, though that may ha’
been done for anythin’ I know to the contrairey--but mark my vords, Job
Trotter, he’s a reg’lar thoroughbred angel for all that; and let me see
the man as wenturs to tell me he knows a better vun.’ With this
defiance, Mr. Weller buttoned up his change in a side pocket, and, with
many confirmatory nods and gestures by the way, proceeded in search of
the subject of discourse.
They found Mr. Pickwick, in company with Jingle, talking very earnestly,
and not bestowing a look on the groups who were congregated on the
racket-ground; they were very motley groups too, and worth the looking
at, if it were only in idle curiosity.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Pickwick, as Sam and his companion drew nigh, ‘you will
see how your health becomes, and think about it meanwhile. Make the
statement out for me when you feel yourself equal to the task, and I
will discuss the subject with you when I have considered it. Now, go to
your room. You are tired, and not strong enough to be out long.’
Mr. Alfred Jingle, without one spark of his old animation--with nothing
even of the dismal gaiety which he had assumed when Mr. Pickwick first
stumbled on him in his misery--bowed low without speaking, and,
motioning to Job not to follow him just yet, crept slowly away.
‘Curious scene this, is it not, Sam?’ said Mr. Pickwick, looking good-
humouredly round.
‘Wery much so, Sir,’ replied Sam. ‘Wonders ‘ull never cease,’ added Sam,
speaking to himself. ‘I’m wery much mistaken if that ‘ere Jingle worn’t
a-doin somethin’ in the water-cart way!’
The area formed by the wall in that part of the Fleet in which Mr.
Pickwick stood was just wide enough to make a good racket-court; one
side being formed, of course, by the wall itself, and the other by that
portion of the prison which looked (or rather would have looked, but for
the wall) towards St. Paul’s Cathedral. Sauntering or sitting about, in
every possible attitude of listless idleness, were a great number of
debtors, the major part of whom were waiting in prison until their day
of ‘going up’ before the Insolvent Court should arrive; while others had
been remanded for various terms, which they were idling away as they
best could. Some were shabby, some were smart, many dirty, a few clean;
but there they all lounged, and loitered, and slunk about with as little
spirit or purpose as the beasts in a menagerie.
Lolling from the windows which commanded a view of this promenade were a
number of persons, some in noisy conversation with their acquaintance
below, others playing at ball with some adventurous throwers outside,
others looking on at the racket-players, or watching the boys as they
cried the game. Dirty, slipshod women passed and repassed, on their way
to the cooking-house in one corner of the yard; children screamed, and
fought, and played together, in another; the tumbling of the skittles,
and the shouts of the players, mingled perpetually with these and a
hundred other sounds; and all was noise and tumult--save in a little
miserable shed a few yards off, where lay, all quiet and ghastly, the
body of the Chancery prisoner who had died the night before, awaiting
the mockery of an inquest. The body! It is the lawyer’s term for the
restless, whirling mass of cares and anxieties, affections, hopes, and
griefs, that make up the living man. The law had his body; and there it
lay, clothed in grave-clothes, an awful witness to its tender mercy.
‘Would you like to see a whistling-shop, Sir?’ inquired Job Trotter.
‘What do you mean?’ was Mr. Pickwick’s counter inquiry.
‘A vistlin’ shop, Sir,’ interposed Mr. Weller.
‘What is that, Sam?--A bird-fancier’s?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick.
‘Bless your heart, no, Sir,’ replied Job; ‘a whistling-shop, Sir, is
where they sell spirits.’ Mr. Job Trotter briefly explained here, that
all persons, being prohibited under heavy penalties from conveying
spirits into debtors’ prisons, and such commodities being highly prized
by the ladies and gentlemen confined therein, it had occurred to some
speculative turnkey to connive, for certain lucrative considerations, at
two or three prisoners retailing the favourite article of gin, for their
own profit and advantage.
‘This plan, you see, Sir, has been gradually introduced into all the
prisons for debt,’ said Mr. Trotter.
‘And it has this wery great advantage,’ said Sam, ‘that the turnkeys
takes wery good care to seize hold o’ ev’rybody but them as pays ‘em,
that attempts the willainy, and wen it gets in the papers they’re
applauded for their wigilance; so it cuts two ways--frightens other
people from the trade, and elewates their own characters.’
‘Exactly so, Mr. Weller,’ observed Job.
‘Well, but are these rooms never searched to ascertain whether any
spirits are concealed in them?’ said Mr. Pickwick.
‘Cert’nly they are, Sir,’ replied Sam; ‘but the turnkeys knows
beforehand, and gives the word to the wistlers, and you may wistle for
it wen you go to look.’
By this time, Job had tapped at a door, which was opened by a gentleman
with an uncombed head, who bolted it after them when they had walked in,
and grinned; upon which Job grinned, and Sam also; whereupon Mr.
Pickwick, thinking it might be expected of him, kept on smiling to the
end of the interview.
The gentleman with the uncombed head appeared quite satisfied with this
mute announcement of their business, and, producing a flat stone bottle,
which might hold about a couple of quarts, from beneath his bedstead,
filled out three glasses of gin, which Job Trotter and Sam disposed of
in a most workmanlike manner.